TCCTA Blog

"Team Blogging" Site for Online Educators Launched

Instructors often learn more from each other informally than from organized efforts at professional development. Many online pedagogical communities have arisen that have broad membership and still remain focused on a particular aspect of teaching. 

A recent addition to this category is Digital Pedagog, which is, according to its Web site, "Intended to serve as a source for rich and diverse thought, opinion, and exploration of best practices for delivering and developing engaging online, blended, and web-enhanced educational opportunities." The organizers hope the blog will serve as a platform for building an intellectual community of educators who "seek to advance online teaching and learning and connect with like-minded colleagues across the web."

The new blog will feature practical information with regards to new educational technologies, instructional strategies, pedagogy, and emerging trends in online and blended learning. Through exploration, research, opinion, and news, it also seeks to "highlight the accomplishments and innovations of our colleagues."

The group is based at Quinnipiac University, in Connecticut. Here's the link.

The site also recently received a favorable review in Inside Higher Ed., which is available here free. 

Recession Historic for Community Colleges

When scholars write about the history of higher education they generally refer to a handful of milestones, such as the development of land grant universities, coeducational schools, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. To most authorities the advent of community colleges is important, but we often get the feeling that their historical significance is underplayed.

This may be about to change. 

The current recession, as reported here frequently, is propelling a mass movement of students into two-year schools. And national media outlets have noticed. Many commentators are beginning to take note of how the educational landscape is being transformed—perhaps permanently. One of the more thoughtful journalists in this category is the respected economics correspondent David Leonhardt of the New York Times. His most recent article (registration) gets into the tangential issues of how to measure what students actually know when they graduate and whether a college education is actually worth it in economic terms. Community colleges are an important component of such discussions these days and it's hard to escape the impression that an important new era is beginning for opinion leaders.

Here are a couple of passages from Mr. Leonhardt's piece.

Along with all this skepticism, though, economic downturns also create one big countervailing force that pushes people toward college: many of them have nothing better to do. They have lost their jobs, or they find no jobs waiting for them after high school. In economic terms, the opportunity cost of going to school has been reduced. Over the course of the 1930s, the percentage of 17-year-olds who graduated from high school jumped to 50 percent, from less than 30 percent. Boys — many of whom would have been working in better times — made up the bulk of the influx. In our Great Recession, students have surged into community colleges.

And:

Earnings may be a flawed measure of an education’s value, but they’re about the only tangible measure we have. And the work that labor economists have done suggests that colleges do indeed deserve credit for much of the earnings gaps between their graduates and everyone else. The median earnings of full-time workers with bachelor’s degrees was nearly $47,000 in 2007, according to the Census Bureau. The median for someone who had attended college but failed to get a four-year degree was nearly $33,000, and the median for a high-school graduate was nearly $27,000. Compare these numbers with the typical education debt that a college student has on graduation day — $20,000 — and it’s clear that a college education is worth the debt.

Stimulus Funds Webinar Scheduled

Federal stimulus funds are available to Texas higher education institutions under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as ARRA). Many questions have arisen about the current and prospective use of these funds. Today (Sept. 28), the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board will broadcast a webinar, starting at 2:30 p.m., from the board room in Austin. The meeting is designed to provide participants with an opportunity to learn about how the money is being spent, and the guidelines for applying for funds under the law. The webinar is scheduled to last until 4:00.

The federal stimulus funds under ARRA provided a substantial portion of the state budget for the next biennium, reportedly allowing the Legislature to avoid a tax increase or layoffs in state agencies and school districts across the state.

Five minutes prior the meeting a link on the website to view the broadcast will appear. The Coordinating Board advises participants to visit the site beforehand for some useful handouts and background information. Questions will be allowed from participants during the presentation.  

If you have any questions, please email ARRAOffice@thecb.state.tx.us.

Reading This Will NOT Melt Your Brain!

A new book by Dennis Baron, professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois–Champaign, attempts to debunk the abundant concern among some commentators (as often reported here) who think that the Internet and other digital means of communication are turning us into a dumber species. The book is "A Better Pencil," and it takes the long view of such controversies, pointing out that all advances in communications since the days of Plato have been met with unjustifiable fear and suspicion. The grim predictions are never true, the author says. In fact, each advance in technology since the smoke signal has improved communication for the betterment of society.

Faculty members who voice concern about the reading and writing habits of the most recent generation of students may be particularly interested in what Dr. Baron has to say. Caveat: His students matriculate at a highly selective university.

Salon, an online magazine, recently conducted a cogent interview with the author. The interview is by Vincent Rossmeir. The title of the article: "Is the Internet Melting Our Brains?"

A couple of choice extracts from Dr. Baron's responses to the interviewer's questions:

I start with Plato's critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They're not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down -- the ultimate irony. We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won't have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there's no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant -- it disconnects the author from the words. That a pen and pencil connects you more directly with the page. And then with the computer, you have the whole range of "this is going to revolutionize everything" versus "this is going to destroy everything."

And: 

Opening up writing to new voices can’t be a bad thing. We’re seeing this spiral. The more people use technology, the more people communicate, the more people in power become concerned with how to control that use. There are two forces pushing against each other. Whether it’s government or religious organizations or schools controlling what children do online or parents controlling what their kids are doing with communication technologies or groups online self-organizing and deciding how to control what does and does not get expressed -- it’s similar to what happened when printing presses became a major means of communication or when radio and TV became major communication players. How do you license, how do you control what gets said on the air? There’s a lot of bad stuff online and there’s a lot of good stuff online, and it’s going to take a long time to figure out what standards and regulations are going to be acceptable that aren’t going to stifle creativity but that are going to give people some security as well.

Hybrid Classes Work Best, Study Says

As practitioners know, there is an ongoing debate about what sort of class presentation works best: distance, traditional (face-to-face), or hybrid. Hybrid classes blend online instruction with frequent face-to-face contact between instructors and students. 

It turns out hybrid is best, at least a according to an interesting study by South Texas College. The STC report is attracting attention nationwide. Researchers at the community college, led by Brenda S. Cole, analyzed the spring 2009 grades of every student enrolled there. The basis for assessing outcomes was straightforward: “A,” “B,” or “C” grades qualified as successful outcomes; “D” and “F” grades counted as unsuccessful.

The data showed that, over all, 82 percent of students of hybrid courses were successful, compared to 72 percent of classroom courses and 60 percent of distance courses. The study was launched out of necessity, because of the current enrollment surge. 

“At the heart of the study was to determine the effectiveness of hybrid instruction to determine its validity as a way to manage a booming student population,” said Dr. Cole. “We do not have the funds to build more buildings immediately and with a more than 20 percent increase in enrollment this fall, we need to find a way to better maximize our resources. We may have very well hit a gold mine in hybrid courses.”

Here's a link to the STC press release for more information.

Here's a link to a recent article on the study in Inside Higher Ed.

Vets Have Trouble Adjusting to Campus Life

College and university campuses around the country are reporting record enrollments of military veterans. Some of the current surge in enrollment is due to the new G.I. Bill, which awards vets a highly improved package of benefits over what they were entitled to previously. It's great that these individuals can now afford UCLA or Notre Dame if they qualify, but there may be a down side, too. 

A recent article in the Washington Post by Emma Brown (registration) illustrates, perhaps inadvertently, how some of these students may be better off at a community college than at a resident university. According to the piece, many vets feel "older" than the incoming freshmen and have trouble relating to their classmates. Also, at larger institutions, the atmosphere seems chaotic and juvenile to those who are accustomed to military discipline and structure. The demographic profile of community college students and the (usually) smaller populations could be a closer approximation to what these vets may be searching for. The article reports that many veterans feel alienated and drop out before they really get started. Many studies have indicated that "engagement" by students is a key factor in their academic persistence. 

One vet told the Post, "I'm not super-old, but I spent 27 months in Afghanistan, and I feel super-old because of that."

And:

Student veterans are a singular population: They are older and more likely to be married than traditional students, and they are more likely, as reserve members, to be called up for deployment in the middle of the semester. Some return from combat needing help dealing with the emotional aftermath of war.

National Core Standards Released

The Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association have released common standards for core curriculula in mathematics, reading, and writing that could create a set of national standards for what high school students need to know to be "college ready."

Reportedly, every state but Texas has signed on to the groups' Common Core Standards Initiative. The federal government has tied participation in the project to qualifying for a new pool of federal funds for school districts, and the American Council on Education (in conjunction with scholarly societies) is organizing teams of college faculty members to review the standards.

According to the Dallas Morning News, "State Education Commissioner Robert Scott, with the backing of Gov. Rick Perry, has turned down an invitation to work with the other states in drafting common core standards for English and math classes, spelling out what students at all grade levels should be taught in those subjects." State officials maintain that the Texas standards will be higher than the federal standards.

Here's the link. You can click around and find a variety of interesting documents.

The release of these standards was also reported by Inside Higher Ed.

How Valid Are Student Evaluations?

Faculty members often feel ambivalent about student evaluations. Depending on the class and the instrument used, students frequently offer helpful observations and suggestions for improvement. On the other hand, some comments can be outrageously over the top, just plain wrong, or even potentially libelous. Then there is the nagging question of whether more rigorous instructors receive lower evaluations. 

This is a worthy topic, especially in light of prospective implementation of HB 2504, which mandates that Texas institutions of higher education, via the Coordinating Board, formulate a plan to publish student evaluations of faculty online. Here's a link to a previous post on the subject. The degree to which these tools actually contribute to a valid assessment of instruction should inform any discussion in the months ahead. Based on comments by the bill's sponsors, the measure is intended to foster "transparency" for students and parents as they select courses in the curriculum.

H. William Rice, in the September 14 issue (subscription) of the Chronicle of Higher Education, offers some provocative observations on the usefulness of student evaluations. The entire piece is worth a look. The author, currently in the English department at Kennesaw State University, has many years of experience as a faculty member and supervisor.

Here are a couple of key passages:

"Sure, student evaluations have their limits. They should never be the only means of evaluating faculty members, and they should never be used to snoop on professors who deal with controversial subjects in their classes. Yes, administrators have been guilty of misusing them. But the benefits far outweigh the risks, and faculty members who actually want to become better teachers—and who believe that good teaching skills are not bequeathed to them in perpetuity with the awarding of a Ph.D.—should read them over and over again."

And:

"Furthermore, excluding students from the evaluation system ignores two basic laws of human psychology: We cannot see ourselves as others see us, and our profession, like any other, distorts the way we view the world. Is any professional in this litigious world of ours beyond being questioned by constituents? Imagine going to a neurosurgeon who tells you to ignore the complaints her patients have made to the medical board: She has a medical degree, so she can do surgery in any way she damn pleases.

Students are also very good at picking up on mundane aspects of one's teaching that over time can significantly undermine our educational system. Is the professor late? Do the tests the professor gives have anything to do with the subject of the classes? Does the professor show respect for the students? Comment on student papers? Return them promptly? Cancel class every Friday when it is sunny? Waste class time discussing personal problems or political or even spiritual concerns that have nothing to do with the subject of the course?

Most professors consider those matters to be issues of basic competence. But when faculty members become administrators and read volumes of evaluations, they generally discover that some professors are late every day, do not return papers, and think that the "little bastards" are their private audience for whatever they want to discuss. The newly minted administrator also discovers how overwhelmingly positive most evaluations are and how few of them have anything to do with the professor's politics. If academic freedom protects incompetence, then God help our educational system."

NBC News Profiles Community Colleges

America's community colleges are swamped. Due to the sagging economy and rising tuition at universities, students are flocking to two-year schools.

We already knew this, of course, but it's noteworthy that at least one network newscast has reported on the subject. NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams recently included a segment on the burdens that community colleges are facing. Several schools are profiled, with a brief glimpse of what appears to be Eastfield College in the Dallas County Community College District, where apparently students are having extra trouble getting parking places right now. 

More disturbingly, students are being turned away in California, and at least some other states, due to budget cuts. It's good to know that the report actually gets into funding shortfalls, which are present virtually everywhere. 

In Texas it is extremely unlikely that the enrollment surge can be served adequately by the funding formula, which is based on the previous "base year." Funding in our state is retrospective, in the sense that current enrollment increases do not generate funds immediately.

Here's the link to the NBC News story. You'll have to watch a brief commercial first.

(Interestingly, it's NBC that also recently aired its pilot for "Community," a comedy about a fictional community college.)

Nominate Your College Librarian

Librarians in our nation’s 123,000 libraries make a difference in the lives of millions of Americans every day. Now is your chance to tell us why we should shine the spotlight on a librarian at your public, school, college, community college or university library. Nominate your librarian for the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award!

Up to ten librarians will be honored. Each will receive $5,000 and be recognized at an awards ceremony hosted by The New York Times at TheTimesCenter in December 2009.

Nominate a librarian in one of three categories: public librarians; school library media specialists; or college, community college, or university librarians.

Nominations close Oct. 9, 2009.

All winners will be announced in early November. Here's the link.